Monday, December 14, 2015

The UK Is Screwed: "Inside Britain's Sharia Courts"

It's bad enough that there are at least 85 sharia "courts" in Britain, and that the Brits have done this to themselves. You actually have to read the whole article (and yes, it's painful and yes, I read the whole thing), to get a really full picture of the "friendly" sharia court judges, whose main problem is that they are judging based on sharia!

This is really a horrifying story, and one that has no silver lining. This is not going to get better, it's going to get worse. I'm really not sure there is any hope for the formerly "Great" Britain.

Here are some nuggets from the piece, and do read the whole thing.

Here's one woman, looking for a sympathetic ear:

"Sitting in one room, a young Muslim woman tells an elderly cleric about the parlous state of her marriage to a 50-year-old man.

‘He oppressed me to the maximum,’ she declares. ‘He is violent, physically, and treats me like a dog.’

"The woman — who looks barely out of her early 20s — describes her spouse as verbally and physically abusive about ‘every little thing’ she does.When the husband’s around, he forces her to wear a headscarf. When he isn’t, which is often, he likes to travel to Tunisia, where she suspects he has secretly married several other women.

"For all she knows, she adds, he might have accumulated as many as ten other wives. Fighting back tears, as she finishes this tale of betrayal, the woman glances to the cleric, who has a long white beard, and sits at a raised desk in front of a bookcase full of Islamic texts. Perhaps she’s hoping for a supportive smile, confirming she’s not at fault. Maybe she’s seeking reassurance that the man will hold her misogynistic, wife-beating husband to account."

"Instead, the elderly cleric, whose name is Suhaib Hasan, starts laughing. ‘Why did you marry such a person?’ he chuckles."Then there is this charming tale:

"Elsewhere, in the same building, a third hearing is taking place, presided over by a much younger cleric, Furqan Mahmood. In front of him sits a nervous-looking Muslim couple, who have several children."

"The cleric certainly seems deeply concerned. ‘It is going to be a difficult case,’ Mahmood, who wears long white robes, tells the couple. ‘We are going to ask our scholars to give you the answers.’

"One potential way to adhere to the letter of Islamic law, he later explains, would be for the couple to undergo a process called Nikah Halala. This would begin with them divorcing, a step that would allow a cleric to legally declare the woman’s first marriage over. Then, before re-marrying her second husband, the woman would be required to have a temporary marriage, to a third man.

‘She will need to have sex first [with the third man], divorce him, [and] wait three menstrual periods,’ reports a witness to the hearing. ‘Then she can return to the father of her children.’

"This medieval-sounding procedure apparently derives from a passage in the Koran that stipulates it’s ‘not lawful’ for a divorced woman to sleep with her ex-husband ‘until after she marries a husband other than him’. Quite understandably the prospect horrifies the couple."

Britain is totally cool apparently with the views held by some of the court judges (current and deceased), who have some pretty hair-raising views about child marriage, marital rape, rape, gays and Jews.